"We know that around 53 per cent of Indigenous Queensland women smoke at some point during pregnancy, but to see nearly half continue smoking more than 20 weeks in is very concerning for us," she said.

"We need to do something to support these women to quit."

She says existing efforts to help the population quit smoking may not be enough.

"We do a lot of work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across a range of cancers," she said.

"We provide different resources and certainly we partner with a lot of other organisations in Queensland to address this issue, but we recognise that more does need to be done and we need more preventative strategies."